After the last SEAL match hosted by Imperial last night on Sunday 22nd March, Imperial seniors finished second in the SEAL senior league, while novices recaptured the SEAL novice title.

The final SEAL match between Imperial, Southampton and Essex saw a DNS from Essex, resulting in the match being a “head to head” between Imperial and Southampton. Both team fielded a full compliment of archers, giving just more tension to the already intense match, as the match would directly determine the winner of SEAL novice league, and also if Imperial will finish second on the senior league.

The senior competition was heavily competed, with all but two of the 11 seniors shooting above 500. Jordan Muscatello continued to dominate the range with 573 points, off-shooting two Southampton archers doing so. Yet his effort did not save the Imperial senior team from a 3 point defeat of 2161-2164 to the Southampton team, which included a novice. The Imperial team last night was Jordan (573), Edmund Lam (531, 18 golds), Rhys Coombs (531, 17 golds) and Ian Connelly (526).

The novice team had, on the other hand, done an undoubtedly better job than the seniors, with Maria Papallou (518), Henry Tregidgo (508) and Calvin Lui (501) setting a new Novice Portsmouth record of 1527 points, all three archers shooting their own personal bests. The impressive team score also meant they won comfortably against the Southampton novice team, who shot a total of 1401 point.

Despite the close defeat, Imperial successfully came second in the SEAL senior league, finishing with 10 league points and an aggregate score of 8662, preceding Kent with the same league points, but only 8563 on aggregate. Surrey is the winner of the senior league this year, being the only unbeaten team in the league. In the novice league, Imperial remained as the only unbeaten team in the league, which mean they are the winner of the SEAL novice league, with Southampton second and Essex third.

On the last indoor badge qualifying match, 4 badges were award to Ian (Half Gold), Maria (Half Gold), Calvin (Half Red) and Henry (Half Blue)

While competition wise the Imperial indoors season came to an end, there are still indoor trainings at Wilson House until Thursday 26th March, after which we will shoot in the British sunshine (hopefully) beginning mid April, exact dates to be announed soon.

As the end of Imperial’s indoor session approaches, they are prepared to host their final SEAL this Sunday, 22nd March against Southampton and Essex. While the status of Sussex v Southampton v Reading match remains unclear, this SEAL evolves to be the decisive one, in both the SEAL senior and novice leagues.

Earlier in the month Surrey’s victory over Brunel and Essex with BUCS scores confirmed their success in defending the SEAL senior title, being the only unbeaten senior team in the league. Yet second is still a question mark – Kent is currently second who finished all fixtures with 10 league points, while Imperial is 4th with 8. Winning the match will most certainly bring Imperial to second, however securing this win is not likely to be easy, with Southampton’s one-point win over Imperial at BUCS, both teams going above 2200.

On the novice side, things will get even more intense, as this match will determine the winner of the SEAL novice league. This match will see all three unbeaten novice teams together, which means the winning team will become the only unbeaten team and therefore secure the title.

With the current situation of the league itself, and the performance of the teams at BUCS, this last SEAL will be of much tension and competition. (Editor note: Southampton v Imperial at BUCS was 2219-2218, placing Southampton 4th and Imperial 5th overall; all novices teams were above 1400 at BUCS).

Please note, however, that due to this match, the training session on this Sunday is cancelled. Results for the match and a summary of the 2008/2009 indoor session will be given early next week.

As the indoors season comes to the end, Imperial have arguably had one of their best days at the nationwide British University and College Sports (BUCS, formerly known as BUSA) Indoors Championships yesterday.

The 2009 BUCS Indoors tournament was held on Saturday 7th March 2009 at Loughborough, which saw an excess of 400 entries from university teams across the UK, after the recent reform to include colleges into BUSA and hence the new name BUCS. The Imperial squad was one of the largest in the session, with 8 senior recurves, 5 novice recurves and a barebow for the first time in the history of ICAC.

Despite the day being well dominated by Edinburgh, who defended both senior and novice team titles, Imperial saw some very outstanding achievements, particularly in team scores. Jordan Muscatello (574), Robin Baumgarten (562), Rhys Coombs (541, 22 golds) and Edmund Lam (541, 18 golds) made up by far the best Imperial BUSA/BUCS team with a total of 2218 points, not only being the first time Imperial went north of 2200 this season, but also just 5 points away from the club’s Portsmouth team record of 2223 shot two years ago. This placed them, unfortunately though, in fifth place, behind Edinburgh (2292), Warwick (2277), Oxford (2230) and Southampton (2219). An extra 13 points from the team would have all but see Imperial becoming third, who had been outside the top three since 2004.

The novice team may have performed less impressively, given such promising achievements by the seniors, but still they have shown a very promising future for the club. The team was lead by Maria Papallou (501) and Nathan March (499), both shooting their personal best, and joining them Calvin Lui (475) at his debut. This meant the novice team shot a total of 1475 points, the third best novice team score since the club’s establishment in 2000. Edinburgh became the unsurprising winner of the novice teams, with Nottingham second and Loughborough third.

The achievement at Loughborough yesterday was also reflected by the 8 badges being awarded, the most being awarded at a single match since the first SEAL match back in November. Badges winners include Robin (Full Blue), Edmund (Full Black), Maria (Half Red), Nathan (Half Red), Ian Connelly (497, Half Red), with 3 awarded via open nominations to Joe Haley (475, Half Blue), Calvin (Half Blue) and Nishanth Sundar (390, half black with a handicap from the standard recurve badge scores).

The indoor season will conclude with the final SEAL match home against Southampton and Essex, with date to be confirmed. Another important note is the AGM, to be held on Sunday 15th March, with details to follow.

Update: Official results are now available online here. Added pictures!

That’s right – we had two teams amongst the 32 teams competing in BUTC, but we’re all a bit laggy after long train journeys and beers, so we failed. But anyway it was a great weekend in Wales for the club, with lots of laughts, ups and downs, alcohol, and of course Mr. Beiter!

Swansea was appointed to be the host of the British University Team Championships 2009, held on Saturday 28th February, the first university archery competition to be hosted in Wales. The 32 teams competing, which included Surrey, London (ULA), Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick and Edinburgh shot the competition, consisting a Bray I qualifier (that’s effectively half a FITA 18), following by elimination round, which involved the teams of 3 archers to shoot 4 ends of 6 arrows in 2 minutes on hit/miss targets. It was said that the competition is to provide the UK university teams a chance to appreciate the format of a team competition (and of course a fun day for all of us).

As usual Imperial fielded two teams to the competition, with Jordan Muscatello, Alex Crampton-Platt and Robin Baumgarten forming the A team, and Chris Eames, Rhys Coombs and Edmund Lam the B team.

The A team had a promising 757 start in the qualifiers, finishing in 12th place. They started off with an easy win (and revenge??) over Surrey B in 1/32 finals. Their 1/16 finals against Oxford was a hard one, which they started 1 point behind and by the third end 3 points. Their final attempt to score 5 out of 6 in the last end, which would have brought the match into a draw, failed when they scored 4 hits that concluded the match with a 1 point defeat by Oxford.

The B team adventure was an achievement by itself, although with much difficulty. They started with a 705 qualifier, placing them in 18th place to shoot against Sheffield in their 1/32 finals. Imperial B found themselves having a hard time throughout, falling behind by 1 point into the final end. Yet they were saved by some critical hits needed to bring the match into a tie, and therefore a shoot-off round, where 3 arrows is to be shot in 1 minute. With the confidence from the last end they won the shoot-off in the first end 2-1. Their 1/16 final was against Lancaster, who also gave the B team a very hard time, but this time they weren’t so lucky as they would lose with a 5-0 last end, with a total lost by 7 points.

The 1/8 finals saw some very interesting matches shot, including the leading SUS team Edinburgh, lead by former Imperial archer Lizzie Williams, being defeated by Lancaster by a 3 point margin, and a surprising 12-5 win by Oxford over their beloved rival Cambridge. Also seen in the 1/8 finals were Warwick A defeating Loughborough and Nottingham A over Liverpool A.

The first of semi-finals was an BUTTS derby between Warwick A and Oxford. After a recent 2296 win in the BUTTS Championships, Warwick was simply too much for Oxford and they scored an easy win into the final against Nottingham, which in the second semi-finals defeated Lancaster.

In the bronze match, Lancaster wasn’t much threatened by Oxford and eventually won the match, while the final match was a very intense one, with Nottingham starting 1 point behind, then even into the last end, before a 1 point win of 16-15, thereby securing the BUTC titles (and potentially show that Robin Hood is indeed good with the bow!)

As always BUTC was a huge laugh and fun, with this year featuring medals made of Beiter hit/miss targets, 50 target pins given to the top 16 teams, meaning that Imperial walked away with 100 of these and of course the sponsor of the event Mr. Werner Beiter being Lord Paramount, which we all had the pleasure to enjoy an after party with until late, and Edmund saying to Mr. Beiter “Ich sprechen Dutch, aber nitch sehr gut” and Jordan claiming that there’s loads of time when the train to London was due to leave in 15 minutes.

Official results and writeup here.